Environmental innovation and the cost of pollution abatement revisited

It is widely assumed in the literature that environmental innovation reduces the marginal cost of pollution abatement. In this paper we show that this is not necessarily the case and we provide some unexpected outcomes.     

FDI对中国环境影响的实证研究——基于省际面板数据的分析

随着各国贸易与投资规模的扩大和环境污染的加剧,外商直接投资引入量和东道国环境的关系问题日益获得人们的重视,逐渐成为国际社会关注的焦点问题。本文主要研究FDI对我国环境污染的影响效果,通过利用连续16年的省际面板数据分区域建立实证模型,分析两者之间的关系。研究结果表明,FDI与我国各个经济区域的环境污染状况关系密切,而影响方向、程度却各不相同。     

International production chains and the pollution offshoring hypothesis: An empirical investigation

Most analyses of the impact of heterogeneous environmental policy stringency on the location of industrial firms have considered the relocation of entire activities – the well-known pollution haven hypothesis. Yet international enterprises may decide to only offshore a subset of their production chain – the so-called pollution offshoring hypothesis (POH). We introduce a simple empirical approach to test the POH combining a comprehensive industrial mergers and acquisitions dataset, a measure of sectoral linkages based on input-output tables and an index score of environmental policy stringency. Our results confirm the impact of relative environmental policy stringency on firms’ decisions to engage in cross-country M&As. Our findings also indicate that environmental taxation have a stronger impact on international investment decisions than standards-based policies. Further, we find that transactions involving a target firm operating in a sector upstream of the acquirer are more sensitive to environmental policy stringency, especially when that sector is highly pollution-intensive. This empirical evidence is consistent with the pollution offshoring hypothesis.     

环保产业发展与区域环境质量改善——来自省级面板数据的证据

环保产业能够通过技术效应、替代效应、直接效应、环保意识和环境管制标准提升等途径来改善环境质量。对我国30个省份的面板数据进行的实证研究发现,环保产业发展确实能够改善区域环境质量,但是目前其对不同污染物排放有着不同的影响力度,其对整体环境质量和工业废水排放的改善作用较为明显,但对固体废物和废气排放的影响并不显著。环保产业改善环境质量的力度和广度都还没有充分展示出来,这与其目前的总体规模和水平相称。     

FDI对东道国环境污染影响的度量

全球化进程中,外商直接投资总量十分巨大,但是关于FDI对东道国环境污染影响的研究却起步较晚,对于东道国政府的调控政策没有起到应有的作用.基于此,本文选用我国开放较早的地区之一--深圳市作为研究对象,该地区外资占比较高,对于我国其他地区引进外资政策具有较大的指导作用.为了准确地度量FDI的污染效应,本文通过建立联立方程,在对规模、结构和技术效应进行分解的基础上,分析FDI对于五个主要环境污染指标产生的影响.论文研究的结果为政府在环境监管以及引导外资产业流向提供了政策依据.     

Pollution abatement with limited enforcement power and citizen suits

Federal environmental laws in the U.S. can be enforced by government agencies or by private parties through citizen suits against polluters. Here, I extend the standard enforcement model to examine the role played by citizen suits. The main results from the paper suggest that in a model with limited enforcement power and citizen suits the regulator fully exercises his enforcement power when the expected penalty from a citizen suit is low, but increases his reliance on citizen suits as the expected penalty rises. Whether an enforcement regime that allows private enforcement is efficient depends not only on the relative costs of private and agency enforcement, but also on the changes in inspection costs that may be caused by private enforcement and the expected penalty from losing a citizen suit. These results suggest that in practice private enforcement may lower social costs as long as relatively inexpensive agency enforcement options, such as administrative proceedings, do not preclude citizen suits.      

Environmental regulation: choice of instruments under imperfect compliance

Compliance is an important issue in environmental regulation. We discuss some of the key elements of the problem and analyze a situation where emissions are not random and firms are risk-neutral. We study the firm’s decision on emissions and compliance when the environmental regulation is based on standards and the enforcement agency audits the firm with a certain probability. We compare total emissions when environmental regulation is based on different instruments: standards, taxes, and tradable permits. We show that when compliance is an issue, environmental taxes are superior to the other instruments, and we analyze the (static) efficiency of the solution. This paper originated from the AEE/REE presidential address for the XXX Simposio de Análisis Económico (Murcia 2005). It builds on the research project on optimal enforcement in environmental problems done in collaboration with David Pérez-Castrillo. I would like to thank David Pérez-Castrillo and Pau Olivella for their useful comments. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (BEC2003-01132) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (Barcelona Economics - CREA and 2005SGR-00836).     

Lobbying against environmental regulation vs. lobbying for loopholes

We analyze the determinants of environmental policy when two industry lobbies can seek a laxer policy that would apply to both industries and loophole lobbying that provides benefits specific to one industry. We determine the properties of the lobbying equilibrium, including the resulting emissions level. In many cases, higher effectiveness of loophole lobbying is detrimental for industries and beneficial for environmental quality, as it exacerbates the free-rider problem in the provision of general lobbying by inducing industries to turn towards loophole lobbying.     

The empirical analysis of the determinants for environmental technological change: A research agenda

Technological change is usually considered a necessary albeit not sufficient condition for a transition to sustainability. However, the empirical analysis of the determinants to environmental technological change has not received too much attention in the environmental/ecological economics literature and many open questions remain in this context. Based on a careful review of the literature, this paper argues that further analysis should address several issues at different levels: i.e., regarding the conceptual framework, the thematic scope of the studies, some methodological issues and other aspects related to the environmental policy variable. First, an integrated conceptual framework which takes into account the interplay between relevant variables influencing environmental technological change (i.e., factors internal and external to the firm and characteristics of the environmental technologies) and all the stages of this process, with a greater emphasis on the invention stage, should be developed. Other aspects should then be tackled, including a focus on several themes (i.e., a greater attention to cross-sectoral technologies, the barriers to different types of environmental technologies, the international dimension of environmental technological change and environmental technological change in small and medium size enterprises), methodological issues (combination of case studies and econometric modelling) and several issues related to the environmental policy variable.     

Voluntary development of environmental management systems: motivations and regulatory implications

Encouraging firms to develop voluntarily more comprehensive environmental management systems (EMSs) is touted as a policy tool to augment mandatory environmental regulations. Using a unique dataset of environmental management practices of Japanese manufacturers and controlling for self-selection bias in survey responses, we find that proxies for regulatory pressures and consumer pressures are the most important factors that motivate firms toward more comprehensive EMSs. Despite the oft-claimed “voluntary” nature of EMS development, our results show that the government may have a role to play in both directly and indirectly affecting EMS development by firms.      

寻求制度创新，实现经济与环保的共生

本文从制度角度分析了环境问题的成因,指出经济发展与环境保护之间的矛盾是由于环保及相关产业制度设计不当导致的。通过改革现有制度,在制度中引进对称的约束与激励机制,可以有效促进环境保护与经济发展的和谐共生。本文还提出了解决环境保护问题的对策建议。     

环境污染及治理的经济学分析

本文从经济学角度来分析我国转型时期的环境污染及治理问题，主要运用外部性原理分析环境污染的原因，指出“市场失灵”和“政府失灵”是导致环境污染的经济根源。然后．分析了环境污染与经济发展的辩证关系。最后，针对我国的国情，提出了当前治理环境污染的对策性建议。     

The core in an oligopoly market with indivisibility

Summary. This paper studies the core in an oligopoly market with indivisibility. It provides necessary and sufficient conditions for core existence in a general m-buyer n-seller market with indivisibility. When costs are dominated by opportunity costs (i.e., a firm's variable costs are sufficiently small), the core condition can be characterized by the primitive market parameters. In a 3-2 market with opportunity cost, the core is non-empty if and only if the larger seller's opportunity cost is either sufficiently large or sufficiently small. Received: June 9, 1999; revised version: October 22, 1999     

Environmental policies in a differentiated oligopoly revisited

Constructing a model of polluting oligopoly with product differentiation, we consider how product differentiation, together with the presence and absence of free entry, affects optimal pollution tax/subsidy policies. The sign of the short- and long-run optimal pollution taxes are highly sensitive to the parameter measuring product differentiation as well as the presence of free entry. How they are affected by a change in product differentiation, which is not addressed in the existing literature, is also made clear.     

Local environmental regulation and plant-level productivity

This paper examines the impact of environmental regulation on the productivity of manufacturing plants in the United States. Establishment-level data from three Censuses of Manufactures are used to estimate 3-factor Cobb-Douglas production functions that include a measure of the stringency of environmental regulation faced by manufacturing plants. In contrast to previous studies, this paper examines effects on plants in all manufacturing industries, not just those in “dirty” industries. Further, this paper employs spatial-temporal variation in environmental compliance costs to identify effects, using a time-varying county-level index that is based on multiple years of establishment-level data from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey and the Annual Survey of Manufactures. Results suggest that, for the average manufacturing plant, there is no statistically significant effect on productivity of being in a county with higher environmental compliance costs. For the average plant, the main effect of environmental regulation may not be in the spatial and temporal dimensions.     

Environmental regulation and safety outcomes: Evidence from energy pipelines in Canada

This paper investigates the effects of more stringent environmental regulation—specifically, paying amortized abandonment fees as accrued and absolute liability for adverse events—on the safety performance of Canadian oil and gas pipelines. We construct a comprehensive dataset that includes pipeline adverse events, throughput, and regulatory intensiveness for fourteen federally-regulated energy pipelines in Canada. We find that abandonment fees are significantly and positively associated with pipeline events. On average, a 1% increase in abandonment fees is associated with 1.3 more events per month. In contrast, establishing absolute liability is associated with significant decreases in the number of pipeline events: on average, absolute liability is responsible for eliminating 80% of quarterly events for Canadian major oil pipelines and 20% for smaller pipelines.     

Environmental performance and returns to pollution abatement in China

Because of China's extremely rapid economic growth, the scale and seriousness of environmental problems is no longer in doubt. Whether pollution abatement technologies are utilized more efficiently is crucial in the analysis of environmental management in China. This study analyzes how the performance of environmental management has changed over time using province level data for 1992-2003. Mixed results for environmental performance are shown using nonparametric estimation technique. We find that environmental performance index, abatement effort, and increasing returns to pollution abatement play important roles in determining the pollution level over the period of the study.     

行业环境管制对就业影响的经验研究:基于25个工业行业的实证分析

本文首先参考Cahuc和Zylberberg(2004)以及Copeland和Taylor(2003)的分析,从理论上得到了劳动对污染品价格,即环境管制的交叉弹性,在数值上与污染品占总成本份额及排放强度成正比,在符号上取决于两种要素的替代效应和收入效应的共同作用。随后采用2001-2007年中国25个工业行业的面板数据验证了交叉价格弹性为正,也就是说劳动与污染品是总的替代品,环境管制加强会促进就业上升;污染排放强度也确实会提高交叉价格弹性,这意味着污染密集型的重化工行业,环境管制加强所引致的就业创造相对较大。     

Information regulation: Do the victims of externalities pay attention?

Individuals living in metropolitan areas are exposed to a large number of industrial risks. Information regulation is a new tool to manage such risks. We ask if large-scale information initiatives directed at the general public can affect individual risk perceptions. The answer is affirmative. Using the publication of the Toxics Release Inventory as a case study, we find a decline in predicted property values when new information on pollution became available, indicating that homebuyers adjusted their risk perceptions upward. The response, however, is limited to sources of toxic emissions that are located at a moderate distance from the properties in our sample.      

Self-Reporting and Private Enforcement in Environmental Regulation

Self-reporting of compliance status has become a common feature in the enforcement of environmental regulation. In this paper, I generalize existing models of enforcement with self-reporting to include the possibility of private enforcement of regulation through citizen suits. This allows me to identify an additional argument for the efficiency of self-reporting: it can increase the likelihood of a successful suit and thus facilitate private enforcement of regulation. Specifically, if self-reporting sufficiently increases the expected penalty for losing a citizen suit, if the costs of private enforcement are low, and if inspection costs are high enough relative to enforcement costs, self-reporting lowers expected regulatory and social costs by allowing the regulator to rely on private enforcement and decrease his enforcement efforts.

---